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THE SUREENDER OF GENERAL LEE AND THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA 
AT APPOMATTOX, VIRGINIA, APRIL 9, 1865 



Paper Read at a Meeting of Surviving Officers of the Second Massachusetts Infantry, at Boston, AuguA 9, 1916 
By H, B. Scott, Late Lieut. Colonel 4th Massachusetts Cavalry 



1 NOT TO BE RE-PRINTED AS A WHOLE, OK IN PART, WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION OK THE AL'THORI 

// was my fortune to be present at the time of the surrender of General Lee's Confederate Army at the 
McLean House, April 9, 1865, soon after the formalities were arranged, and if agreeable to you 
Comrades, I will tell you about it. Of all the officers. Union and Confederate, who were there at 
that time, I believe I am the onl\) survivor : — 

1 was at that time a Major of the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry, but detailed on the staff of 
Major General E. O. C. Ord, commanding the 24th and 25th Army Corps. On the 5th of April, 
after a long and hard day's march, the command had reached Burksville Junction, at the junction 
of the Richmond and Danville Railroad with the Lynchburg and Petersburg Railroad. Soon after 
our arrival there. Generals Grant and Sheridan also came there, and later General Meade, and a con- 
ference was had with General Ord on the situation and on the plans for the morrow. While these 
plans were being discu.ssed, Colonel Francis Washburn, who, with twelve ofificers and some sixty- 
eight men of the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry, were the cavalry of the command, joined me at the depot 
of the railroads, and we had supper together — some tea and hard-tack, and bacon toasted over a 
little fire. While we were talking over the situation, an order came from Headquarters for Colonel 
Washburn to take his cavalry and also two regiments of Ohio infantry and proceed to High 
Bridge, some fifteen miles, and there be governed by circumstances. It was thought that possibly 
they might get news from Sherman : possibly hold the bridge till Ord's troops could arrive. 

Washburn and I talked it over, and I urged him to get his orders in writing in case of 
trouble. He then left, got his cavalry ready and the two tired regiments of infantry, and started 
ofif a little after midnight. A little later it became known that General Lee, with the remains of 
his army, was also on the march in the same direction, and General Ord sent his Chief of Staff, 
Brevet Brigadier General Theodore Reed, to stop Washburn and to fall back on the main army. 
But it was too late. Reed, with one orderly, got through to the High Bridge, but the whole rem- 
nant of Lee's army was interposed between Washburn and Reed, and Ord's command. Ord's 
troops moved early in the morning (April 6th), and attacked the rear guard of Lee's .roops, who 
put up a vigorous defense, while the main army moved on. This lasted till the evp.ning, and in 
the morning Lee was well out of reach. General Ord's command, starting on the 6th, after the 
fighting with Lee's rear guard, reached Farmville on the 7th, threw out pickets and patrols, 
and awaited advices from General Sheridan, who with the main force of cavalry and infantry, were 
in sharp pursuit of Lee's army. 

On the 8th, General Ord's command were started out on the road to Lynchburg, marching all 
day. About seven p. M., when it seemed as if the tired men must .stop for the night. General Ord 
received a message from General Sheridan that he had captured a Confederate railroad train load- 
ed with provisions and clothing from Lynchburg for Lee's army, and that if we could get up to 
support him in the morning we would bag the whole of Lee's remaining army. This message 
was read to each regiment of our troops as it came along, and each one tired as they were, with 
cheers took up the march again. It was eleven o'clock when we came to camp, but there was my 
faithful servant Bob to meet me. He told me that a train of Confederate cars had been captured 






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a little way behind, loaded with bacon and provisions and clothing, and that if I would permit 
him, he would go and get some of that bacon, and, perhaps, a suit of clothes for himself. Soon 
he came back with two fine sides of bacon but no clothes : clothes all gone. But with a good fire 
to toast one piece of bacon, and with the other for a pillow, I was soon sound asleep. It seemed 
to me barely an hour when I was roused, and found it was daylight, and with General Ord, and 
Captain Brown of his staff, we rode over to General Sheridan's headquarters. General Ord was 
closeted with and took breakfast with General Sheridan, while his staff were equally hospitable 
with myself and Captain Brown. 

Meantime, the troops having breakfasted, were on the move, the booming of artillery, and 
the rattling of musketry, showing that the ball had opened. General Ord and his staff rode down 
to where the head of the column of infantry was approaching ; then, turning to me he said : 
"Major, I wish you would go back till you find the ammunition mules, and their captain, and give 
them orders to come up as near the firing line as it is safe, and keep it there." Then he turned 
with the rest of the staff and rode out to the hill nearby where the active fighting was then going 
on, leaving me there to hunt up the ammunition mules. My heart sank within me. Here was I 
close to the final battle of the war. In all of the battles I had been in, no one of them had been 
a successful one : Winchester, Cedar Mountain, Chancellorsville ; no one of them could be called 
successful ; and now, when success seemed to be certain, perhaps the closing of the war, I was to 
have charge of a lot of ammunition mules ! So while General Ord and the rest of the staff rode 
out on to a hill, where they could see it all, I turned eastward to look out for the ammunition 
mules. But I hadn't gone more than a hundred yards, before there were the mules, each with his 
four boxes of ammunition strapped on his back, head up, as if he appreciated his importance, and 
a captain in command of them. 

My anxious heart was light again. I gave the captain his orders to keep as near the firing 
line as was safe, and rode off to join General Ord and the rest of the staff. 1 found General Ord 
on a hill that commanded a fine view of the whole field, reported as to the mules, and took my 
place near the general. The whole field before us was full of fighting. Our cavalry, after one of 
their attacks, had been driven back and came rushing in, in some confusion. A few minutes later 
General Sheridan came galloping up to where General Ord was, much excited, and directed one of 

his staff to order Col. , to mount his men. Then, speaking to General Ord, he said : "You 

just wait here a few minutes and you will see the God damnedest running you ever saw. Tell Col. 

to mount his men." By this time a Confederate battery had got the range of the staff on 

the hill, and were throwing shells around rather promiscuously, and accordingly General Ord direct- 
ed the staff to scatter out more thinly. Just then a Confederate oflicer, with a white flag, came 
galloping up, and about the same time there was a fierce attempt by the Confederates to open up 
the Lynchburg road, and there was a very severe and continuous fire of musketry. It seemed 
that when Lee had decided to give up the fight and ordered the flag of truce sent out, word was 
not sent to the Confederate troops trying to open up the Lynchburg road, who ran into our over- 
whelming column of fresh troops. The firing was so hot that General Ord suggested that some- 
one of the staff find out what it was, and I offered my services for this. It was only a short dis- 
tance to the Lynchburg road, but there was the saddest sight I saw during the v.ar. The ground 
was covered, as thick as they could lie, with dead bodies, Union and Confederate, but mostly 
Confederate. If only the white flag of surrender could have been waved five minutes 
sooner, some five hundred good men might have gone home to their wives and families ; but such 
is war. 

Returning to where I had left General Ord, I found he had gone with General Grant to the 

'McLean house, a short distance away, to meet General Lee ; also that our victorious troops, in 

overwhelming numbers and much artillery, had pushed forward and taken possession of the hill at 

the foot of which were the remains of Lee's army, their wagons and horses and artillery. I wait- 



ed around for General Ord during the day, but he did not return till the evening, when he went to 
bed, but we all knew that the terms of the surrender had been agreed upon and acceded to. The 
next morning General Ord went again to the McLean house to a conference, and returning there 
in the afternoon he took me with him to the McLean house, and I was there I should think one or 
two hours. General Lee, dressed in full uniform, sat in a chair at one side of the room. General 
Grant, who was there, was almost the only one who talked with him. The spirit of each of them 
seemed very cordial to each other, but General Grant's good clothes had not arrived, and he wore 
an undress uniform, unbuttoned. At the other end of the room. General Ord, Generals Sheridan, 
Custer, Longstreet and Pickett, were hobnobbing with each other in the most friendly manner 
possible — talking of old times, the purses of the Northern officers freely opened to the. Southern 
officers, in the most cheerful, generous way. All the furniture in the room had already been 
bought at high prices. General Ord, I think, getting the table on which the terms of the surrender 
had been written, and the others getting various other articles of furniture. I was so much im- 
pressed by the whole scene that I never secured a single thing, in the way of a memento. 

All of this time General Lee at the other end of the room sat silent, except as talking with 
General Grant. General Lee's Chief Medical Officer, however, was very anxious to get back to 
Winchester, Virginia, which was his home, on account of sickness in his family. General Ord in- 
troduced him to me, and I prepared the pass which General Ord signed and the doctor started 
forthwith for Winchester. A little later we all left, and Generals Grant and Ord and Sheridan, 
and all of their numerous staffs, on horseback, rode back towards the railroad at Burksville Junc- 
tion. About half-way back, tents for these numerous military families were pitched, and a big 
tent with tables spread for all the generals and their staffs, and we had a hearty supper — beefsteak 
and potatoes, bread and butter, and coffee. After supper we all adjourned to where the tents were 
pitched outside, the generals having their tents at the back of the square, and staff officers on the 
sides. Everybody was smoking and everybody feeling uncommonly well. General Ingalls 
seemed the liveliest of them all. General Grant smoked his cigar, but said nothing. Ingalls was 
full of fun. Among other things he said : "Now in Turkey, after a successful compaign, I un- 
derstand it is the custom to give the successful general a harem of beautiful wives. How will that 
be. General, for us?" On the young man side of the officers, one of the officers, since distin- 
guished in Indian fighting, here piped up : "General, does brevet rank count there?" A little 
later, we all turned in and were up bright and early for breakfast and a start for Burksville Junc- 
tion, where General Grant was to take a train to Washington to report to President Lincoln, and 
General Ord to Richmond to take command there. 

At Burksville Junction were the hospitals, and there I found Colonel Washburn, who had 
led the fight of the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry, sixty-eight men and ten officers, against all the cav- 
alry of the retreating Lee's army. Colonel Washburn was very glad to see me, and as I sat by 
his bedside he told me the story of his fight. When he got out to High Bridge, rather early in 
the morning, with his small force, after conference with General Reed, who had taken charge of 
the two regiments of infantry, he turned towards a body of Confederate Home Guards, who with 
an old cannon, were apparently getting ready to attack him. These he charged vigorously, cap- 
tured the old cannon, scattered the local troops, and then turned back towards the two regiments 
of infantry he had left with General Reed. These were in a bad way, being attacked by the ad- 
vance of Lee's cavalry. Charging on these, Washburn captured many of them and dispersed the 
rest. Then, taking Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins with him, he went to the front to reconnoitre the 
situation, came back, called his officers together and explained his plans— to charge the approach- 
ing Confederate force. Before them were the whole remaining Confederate cavalry under General 
Rosser, ten times or more outnumbering his little force. But Washburn did not hesitate. The 
charge was sounded, and again it was man to man, sabre against pistol, and the sabres drove the 
pistols. But now the whole Confederate cavalry, under Generals Rosser and Boston, were mix- 



ing, hand to hand, with Washburn's httle force of sixty-eight men and ten officers, less the losses 
already incurred. Also, Colonel Washburn had been disabled, and no longer could lead them, 
and there was nothing to do but to surrender. The odds were too great. Two officers had been 
killed, six others with wounds, and Colonel Washburn missing. Of the Confederates, one gen- 
eral, one colonel, three majors and other officers were killed, and numerous privates. Colonel 
Washburn rode a very high strung, spirited horse, which becoming very much excited, started on 
a run in the midst of the fight, and ran under a low-hanging limb of an oak tree. Washburn, 
looking in another direction, was knocked out of the saddle senseless. When he recovered con- 
sciousness he found a Confederate soldier going through his pockets and said to him : "You 

rebel, what are you doing there?" The Confederate soldier replied : "You 

Yankee, you lie there," and clipped him on the head with his sabre, with a blow that fractured his 
skull. Washburn had previously received a wound in his throat, and until Lee's army had moved 
on and our surgeons had found him, he lay there on the ground. Then he was taken to the hos- 
pital at Burksville Junction where I found him. He was very cheerful and his mind entirely 
clear, but a wound in his threat and a fractured skull were too much. It was a sorrowful parting 
with Colonel Washburn. In spite of his cheerfulness, it was clear that there was but one ending 
to a fractured skull, and a bad wound through the throat. But now the train that was to take 
General Grant to Washington and General Ord to Richmond was ready and I had to go. His 
family came quickly to see him, but he did not long survive. Arriving with General Ord at 
Richmond, we took possession of the Jeff Davis house for headquarters, and I looked up General 
Rosser who had commanded the Confederate cavalry at High Bridge. Colonel Washburn, when 
I saw him last, was very anxious to recover his sabre, whic!h had been a present to him. General 
Rosser kindly undertook this, and recovered the sabre from a Confederate captain, living in the 
Shenandoah Valley. , 

General Rosser was very loud in praise of Colonel Washburn's fighting. He said when 
he came in sight of Washburn's little force of eighty, drawn up for attack, with sabres drawn, 
that he had with him a Colonel of infantry who had lost his regiment at the battle of Sailor's 
Creek. He said to Rosser : "Rosser, I have often heard of cavalry battles with sabres. I don't 
believe there ever was such a thing." Rosser replied : "If you will wait here a little, I think 
you will see one now. Those men look to me as if they meant bu.siness." When Wa.shburn 
charged, Rosser said it was a hand to hand fight, Washturn's men with their sabres and General 
Rosser and his men with pistols. Of the Confederates, General Boston was killed ; also one Col- 
onel, three Majors and a number of other officers disabled. 

After the surrender Lee's Inspector General said to General Ord : "To the sharpness of 
that fight the cutting oflf of Lee's army at Appomattox was probably owing. So fierce were the 
charges of Colonel Washburn and his men, and so determined their fighting that General Lee re- 
ceived the impression that they must be supported by a large part of the army and that his retreat 
was cut off. Lee consequently halted and began to intrench and this gave time for Ord to come 
up and delayed Lee so that Sheridan could intercept him at Appomattox." 



It is usually of little use to imagine what might have happened if different conditions had 
existed, but it seems fair to think that if Washburn and Reed had received their orders of recall, 
and had rejoined Ord's command before Lee had intercepted them so that Lee could have had a 
day of uninterrupted marching before Sheridan intercepted him at Appamattox, that Lee might 
have reached Lynchburg and the mountains, and there have reorganized his forces, and postponed 
the final surrender for quite a while. 

So to Lee's final surrender at Appomattox let us give full credit to Colonel Francis Wash- 
burn of Lancaster Massachusetts, and his gallant officers and men of the Fourth Massachusetts 
Cavalry. • 



